In addition to this page, I posted a running “Wants” above in the menu. I look forward to your feedback, suggestions, and comments as this project will continue to evolve with cards being added as well as possibly being stricken from the binder.

In my previous post below, I love themes when flipping and sorting through cards. While I am working a couple Topps vintage sets and Topps sets from the 1980s, I struggle with what to do with all my other vintage cardboard. This project stems from a similar project that another collector on Twitter @_gritz_ has been working on. If you like these pages, I guarantee you’ll enjoy his as well.

I will be using Topps baseball cards and any Topps oddball cards that used a grey cardboard stock. This includes Drakes, Burger King issues from the late 1970s, 1978 Zest Soap, box bottom cards and so on. I will make exceptions for traded sets from 1983–1991 as those where issued during this cardboard era. Many themes will be obvious, others might take some thinking. Some days I see posting a couple of pages a day, some days maybe just one. Condition doesn’t matter and will welcome trades. I’ll post a want list in the menu as well.

I look forward to your feedback, suggestions, and comments as this project will continue to evolve with cards being added as well as possibly being stricken from the binder.

With that, here is page one of The Topps Binder Project.

Favorite card: 1957 Ted Williams

Card(s) I would like to add: 1961 Dick Groat, 1962 Roger Maris, or 1966 Willie Mays

I have lots of cards. Sometimes I feel I have too many cards. My wife might agree with that last statement, as I’m sure many your significant others would raise a glass to her as well. Most of my cards range from 1952 to the present day with Topps being a vast majority of them.

Sure I have my Red Sox All-Time Collection, my vintage and 1980s Topps sets I am building, my 1980s Oddballs project … but what do I do with them rest of them? My big question I am always battling with is how to organize my cards in a way I can truly enjoy and have fun looking through them?

I started down the road of doing a “Topps Through the Years” project, but realized once I got in the 1960s I was leaving too many cool and great cards by the wayside. This project was to capture one to two pages for each Topps baseball flagship from 1951 to present (still could happen with the leftovers from new project) depicting nine base cards and then a sampling of nine that might an include an All-Star, player combo, manager, leaders etc, etc. I battled through till I got to 1970 when I hit pause and pulled all the cards out of the pages.

It seems like I have always had card piles dedicated to themes. For example, no-hitters, players who hit for the cycle, players from Massachusetts and so on and so on. And then one day, I was looking at someone’s Twitter feed when I noticed a retweet of another collector’s post. It came from a collector known as gritz (@__gritz__). Gritz was building a binder of pages depicting Topps cards, but only ones printed on actual cardboard. There are a couple of exceptions (1985 Topps Tiffany of Rusty Kuntz, some 80s Traded cards on white stock) but none of todays over-glossed, foil stamped, white card stock. He also includes some inserts from the 1960s such as the 1968 Topps Game and 1969 Deckle Edge issues, as well I believe some Drake’s issues as they were printed by Topps and reside on their gray cardboard stock.

For him, like myself, condition didn’t matter, all it needed to be was fun to look at. In many tweets back and forth, he mentioned there was an arbitrary method to his “organized chaos.” While at one point there may have been themes, they have been long absorbed and no he just sticks the card where it ends up in the cycle of page building. Gritz told me it’s the only binder of cards he routinely pulls out to look at. I was fascinated with these pages and the many cools cards I had forgot about or didn’t realize existed—I was hooked.

And here’s where my new—fun project comes in. As much as I would love to have my Topps Mike Trout rookie card next to, say a 1974 Dave Winfield, it just doesn’t look right. I actually tested a couple of pages and tweeted them out to fellow collectors. One page had just gray cardboard stock (1957–1991), the other page was the same as the first, minus several cards that were replaced with white card stock (1993–present) versions. The gray cardboard won hands down. I don’t know what it is, but modern day cards just don’t look good in sheets nor do they carry that smell that old cardboard carries.

So how am I going to organize this new Topps binder project? Well I have always liked themes so that is where I am going to start. My goal is to try not to have pages full of just star cards unless there’s a good sound reason/theme for it. The below are themes not limited to just one page as there are too many atrocious airbrushed beauties and bad 70s hairdos to limit this collector.

Cameos (this 1971 Chris Short with Pete Rose leading off second base in the background)

Great action shots

Great poses

I know I might be missing other themes but the above is just top of my head. I would love to hear your feedback and even card submissions. Hell, I love to trade so would gladly trade for these as well—just drop me a line in the comments or on Twitter (@ShaneKatz73).

ABOUT OFF THE WALL

Another Sox blog, another collector named Shane. I've been collecting for nearly 35 years, survived the junk wax era, changed collecting interests more than I can count, and seem to always be sorting something. Was blogging over there (otwbbcards.blogspot.com) but now here. Always love trading and finding cards I never knew existed.